Propri

By C. Richard Bell

I woke up one morning sometime in 2001 and in between sleep and wakefulness I was thinking about what I had to get up and do. Actually, I was telling myself to get up and take care of the day’s task. Later that evening I started working on a manuscript that began almost two years earlier.  I decided quite spontaneously to revise the beginning of the first chapter with what I was saying to myself that morning. I basically started using the book to talk to myself. I went from writing in the first person to writing in dialogue. Not only did the way the book was written change but so did the substance, purpose, and intent. Over the next few days, months and years I would often find myself writing in the present, which can read throughout the book. I was not writing from hindsight; I was expressing thoughts for the first time as I wrote them. 

The book is large in scope and without a particular genre. Thoughts and emotions don’t happen in category or chronological order. Nor are the thoughts and emotions of a reader categorized in chronology. The book speaks about addiction and recovery yet is not a book about addiction and recovery. It speaks upon the contrast and ultimate uniting of one’s intellectual facilities and those of will and desire. Yet it is not a philosophical book. It speaks upon the evolution from atheism to acknowledging divine reality, but it is not a theological book. It speaks of the vulnerability and struggles of a young black male seeking manhood, but it is not a book about the black “struggle.”  I detail the endeavor to become a better person and the inevitable pitfalls, but it is not a book about overcoming. It is, however, a book about the ever-changing reality of life, regardless of the fallacious idea that people stay the same.

Since the book was more than 25 years in the making and a large part of it was written in the present the book had no choice but to change as did the author. When I started writing in the Fall of 1998, I figured it would take about a year or two to finish the book. By the fall of the next year, I had the first 3 chapters completed and was working on the fourth. On November 23, 1999, two days before I was to turn 30, my mother committed suicide.  From there I would dive deep into alcohol addiction, set myself on fire, and be a hospital ride away from death after being stabbed 6 times with a 7-inch boning knife.

Ultimately this book is about the inverted order of life that must be turned upside down and put into order. The order of love because anyone who loves desires to be loved. The order of wisdom because it is the means to practice love. And the order of service to others as the substance, form and purpose of life itself. I wrote about what I had lived while I was living it. Just prior to completing the manuscript I realized that writing a book helped me survive while circling the brink of death.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Outskirts Press
• Release date: Mar 23, 2024
• ISBN: 9781977273772

C. Richard Bell

C. Richard Bell was born and raised in Los Angeles. He has spent most of his adult life as a cook working in various restaurants. After being attacked at work by an employee, he decided to pursue his education and received a Bachelor of Science degree in 2016. He currently lives and works in San Francisco and is the father of two sons and six grandchildren.  

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Propri

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Copyright © 2024 C. Richard Bell

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FOREWORD & DEDICATION

We breath without thinking about it. Do we not? We also have the ability to control our breathing. We can slow it down, speed it up, or stop it altogether. That indeed is the paradox of life, the voluntary and the involuntary. Furthermore, the air we breathe into the lungs works involuntarily with the heart to enable blood to transfer oxygen to the brain. This allows us to think. Thought is perpetual and involuntary. We think, without thinking about it, yet we can also control our thoughts. Do we not? Involuntary thought is singular while voluntary thought is often duel. The former is when we think about any given subject outside of self. The latter is when we engage in conversation within. We talk to ourselves during voluntary thinking. More often than not, when we talk to ourselves, there is some type of conscious disagreement, some type of conflict, a struggle between two opposing ideas, if you will. The one thought inflows from that part of self commonly called the soul which is in disagreement with that part of self commonly called the body and senses. There is a medium where the conflict plays out and the two meet. This is called the spirit, where our conscious as well as conscience thought come together.

Call it what you will. We all have these states of spiritual conflict. For those of us who endeavor to become better people this conflict is perpetual in one form or another. This may seem negative, after all, who would want to be in perpetual conflict. Even with self, especially with self. In truth we are doomed when our thought becomes perpetually singular, that is, completely absent of internal conflict. The true and the good are not abstract ideas subject to the personal feelings and beliefs of the human mind. They have a source. In other words, as long as there is dialogue between the opposing thought and feelings there is always an endeavor to do what is right. Since we are not the source of all that is good and true, if the thoughts become singular and one sided then we are in trouble. This is what happens with those who think whatever they do and believe is always right. Because it feels good, especially when it feels good. In the endeavor to unite what we know to be right with what makes us feel good we realize that becoming a better person has nothing to do with overcoming flaws that lead to personal gain. Becoming a better person has everything to do with our relationship with the world around us. It is about how we treat people. As long as there is conversation in the spirit the endeavor to become a better person remains steadfast.

Malik, Decoven, Jeanine, Mani, Malayah, Mekenna, Miasha, Malina and Malik Jr. Live life within the endeavor to become better people and always remember to talk to yourself.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

THE FEAR OF MANHOOD

THE INFAMY OF ISOLATION

BEFORE I WAKE: RETURN OF THE LAST REAL RIDERS

PURGATORY: 104

DARK CLOUDS AND HIDDEN RAINBOWS

ENDEAVOR: PATIENCE IN THE COMFORTER

THE FEAR OF MANHOOD

"Laws and principles are not for the time when there is temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigor; stringent are they ; inviolate they shall be. If at any individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth? They have a worth—so I have always believed; and if I cannot believe it now, it is because I am insane—quite insane: with my veins running fire, and my heart beating faster than I can count its throbs. Preconceived opinions, forgone determinations, are all I have at this hour to stand by: there I plant my foot." {Jane Eyre}

Hey, Propri! Wake up! You sleep too much, and there is no reason to wonder why. Look at all these empty beer cans and small bottles of liquor lying around—why don’t you get up and clean this mess? Hey did you hear me, get up, it is almost time for you to go pick up the kids from school.

Man, what are you talking about? It’s only eleven o’clock; they don’t get out until two.

Get up anyway.

Okay.

Where do you think you’re going? You need to clean up this pigsty of an apartment?

Yeah yeah, I will, as soon as I get back from the liquor store, I need a beer …

Propri, you are a cold piece of work. What happened to you? It is evident you have a drinking problem but there seems to be more to it than that. It seems as if you have given up on life.

You sound like one of those counselors in rehab.

How would you know, you have never been to rehab, although it wouldn’t be a bad idea. Anyway, how are you today?

The same.

What does that mean?

It means that I feel the same way I did the last time you asked me.

I gather you mean that you’re still in a state of idle futility.

You said it! Why do you insist on constantly asking me questions that you already know the answer to? It doesn’t make any sense. It seems to me that you are even more vain than I, not to mention the fact that you get on my nerves.

On your nerves, yes; vain, no. It is better that I provoke you to think about what your life has become so that we might be able to get out of this pit.

Yeah yeah, face my fears, move on, change my lifestyle, use my gifts, follow my dreams, blah blah blah … I heard it all before a million times, now tell me something I don’t know.

"Knowing and acknowledging are two different things. You always add but to the things you claim to know, I tend to add and to what you know."

"I did not even use the word but so try to make sense, when trying to make sense."

"Okay, let me give you a real-life example. Like the other day when it was raining and you said ‘I know it is raining but I will walk to the store anyway.’ Instead of acknowledging the rain by saying, ‘It is raining and I will get my umbrella so I can stay dry.’ Knowing is just a thought, acknowledging is acting in accordance with what you know."

I did get pretty soaked that day. I admit my way of going about things is a bit juvenile; I need to grow up, I guess. AND you still have not told me something I don’t know.

I can only make you conscious of what already exists within. Indeed, it might appear to the naked eye that you resemble a full-grown adult, but we know better because it is quite evident that you lack something essential in regard to genuine manhood.

Okay, smarty! If I am not a man, then what am I? And speak so I can understand you clearly, don’t give me none of that body/spirit, internal/external mumbo jumbo.

Propri, at 28 years old, you are an individual who has not adapted to adult life or developed the discipline and desire to move in the direction that will ultimately define your manhood. This instability is what disturbs you, although it is barely recognizable to those you encounter on a daily basis. You appear to be of sound mind but you are indeed on the verge of being captured by madness. To think and understand what is right and yet live in opposition to that truth is the life of a demented person.

Yeah Yeah, I know.

That is the problem—you ‘know it all’ but you don’t do squat. Propri, you are no longer a child in the literal sense, while at the same time you are so far from coming into your own as a man that you are blind to any life beyond the basic necessities.

I must admit, at times, I do feel as if I am losing my mind. It seems like the more that I learn, the more unbalanced I become. Nay! The more self-destructive I become. It is as if I believe that to know something is the goal in itself. My enigma is just as much your fault as it is mine because you lead people to believe that I am quite balanced. I use your quality as a defense mechanism to prevent people from recognizing my fear. Yep, it’s your fault because you are the one who makes me seek knowledge, all the while knowing that I will not use it in a practical way.

That’s a lie. Your ego keeps you from facing your fear, which also makes you quite mad. You do allow me to have some sort of control as it relates to your life but only for the sake of appearance. You allow me to take control because you do not want people to know that you are actually afraid and lack mental stability, and in some cases, you are just plain stupid. Since you insist on being in control, you use me as a means to manipulate.

All that sounds good, but I wish I knew what the hell you are talking about. All I know is that I am what I am. An average Joe who is a personification of a stumbling life that is no longer in the spirit of youth and yet has not reached his full potential as a man. I am a person who is both a product of my environment as well as a product of self. I love, I hate, I laugh, I cry, I am good, I am bad, I live, and I will die.

Yes indeed, so does everyone—now you tell me something I don’t know!

Okay, if you wish, but you already know what I am about to say.

Thanks for the warning, but remember we are writing a book right now.

Yeah and whose idea was that? And you have the nerve to say I never let you take control.

You allow me to suggest things but you are still in complete control when it comes to actually doing them.

Since you have all the answers, answer me this. Why am I constantly thinking of the past, the future, and with a sense of terror and anxiety, I think in the present. Most of the time I feel like I did when I was a juvenile delinquent, but now I wear an emotional, psychological, and pseudo-intellectual mask. The mask is suffocating but I must always wear it lest someone find out my secret. Although it deprives my brain of oxygen and makes me feel idiotic, I must endure it to protect my false sense of manhood. I must wear the mask so that no one finds out who I really am. It does make me feel demented, it is like the ‘Veil’ that Dr. Du Bois so often speaks of yet on more of an intimate level, if that is possible?

Propri, the world is full of people who like to make believe that they are completely sound of mind, and that only a certain few struggle with emotional and psychological instability. You must take into consideration that a certain amount of imbalance is the case for most people. To tell you the truth, one of the reasons why you feel disturbed is that you spend so much time trying to prove to people that you are normal or even exceptional. Okay, enough about that for now. Don’t you think we should share some life experience so that the reader might understand where we are coming from, or better yet, how we got here?

During the ’70s and ’80s, 111th Street between Normandie and Vermont is a neighborhood anomaly. It is a one-way street in the middle of the community, and if someone were not familiar with the street, they would swear that they were driving down an alley instead of an actual street. The road was uneven with potholes, rocks, loose gravel, and without any elevation to distinguish street from sidewalk. The landscape was made up of dirt, weeds, and garbage, and the homes and apartments were so old and rickety they resembled Slave Row on the big plantations in the Deep South. Rickety old structures aside, one thing made it quite evident that it was a street in 20th-century Los Angeles as opposed to 19th-century Louisiana. Spray paint! Some spots were tagged in a sloppy manner while others showed artistic talent, but they all revealed the same representation in one form or another. 112st Hoover Crip Gang, 11-Duce HCG, or Southlos was hit up on walls, houses, cars, and even garbage cans throughout 111th Street, aka the One-way between Normandie and Vermont. The graffiti would often be accompanied by the names of particular gang members such as Slim, Lil Jap, Lobo, and Jug-head, and at any given time the actual individual or group might be standing right beside the wall on which their name and gang were on display. In early childhood, Propri was not allowed to play near the one-way that was only four houses down the street from his home at 11129 South Mariposa Street. The only time he was permitted to go down to the One-way was to visit Goosy or some other family friend.

One late evening around 1977, Propri, Mamma, and her friend Joyce pulled up into the driveway. They were coming from a drive-in movie, and Mamma wanted to get something from the store but needed to stop by the house to get some cash. Joyce pulled her brand-new 1977 blue Chevy Monte Carlo partially in the driveway so that the windows were parallel with the sidewalk, which allowed a bird’s-eye view right down the street to the corner of Mariposa and 111th—the notorious One-way. While Mamma was in the house getting money, Joyce and Propri heard the loud screams of a man’s voice coming from the One-way. Within seconds, they could see the man who was screaming as Mamma came out of the house. Joyce and Propri yelled for her to hurry into the car. As Mamma got into the car, the windows up and the doors locked, everyone felt safe enough to sit and watch what was going on. Joyce started the car just to be on the safer side of the need to get away. When the man darted under a streetlight, they could see that he was butt-naked as he ran from door to door screaming for help. Joyce and Mamma figured the man was high on PCP, which was the crack-cocaine of the ’70s although not of the epidemic proportion. The hysterical naked man made his way to the third house on the corner and just two houses away from the Monte Carlo. He started frantically banging on the windows and door as he continued to scream at the top of his lungs. He might have been better off letting whatever he was running from catch him. Three shots rang out from within the house; the man stumbled to the sidewalk and fell as he continued to plead for help. They waited awhile because they were not sure where the gunshots came from. When the man continued to lie there, pleading for help with no one else in sight, Mamma rushed Propri into the house and called the police.

Over the next few years, Propri would not doubt what Mamma and Grandma believed in regard to the shooting. As the story went, the man was shot because he was high on PCP and the person who shot him was only trying to defend his family from a deranged man tripping off a very dangerous and powerful hallucinogen. It was only partially true and did not work in court for the shooter. The person who shot the man did indeed believe that the man was high on PCP, but it so happened that he was not having drug-induced hallucinations. Nine years later Propri would be sitting on the same porch where the man was shot and found out what really went down that night. The man who was shot owed some people money, and while he was in the shower two men came into his home to collect the debt. He ran out of his house naked trying to save himself from bodily harm. One might say the man was caught between a fist and a bullet.

By 1986, Propri completely defies Mamma’s rule set back in the ’70s, although it still applied in Mamma’s eyes. He would not only hang out on the One-way but became one of the neighborhood burdens via the crack-cocaine epidemic of that era. As touched on above, there were other dangers on and around the One-way related to the subculture of gang activity that is a perpetual cancer in Los Angeles. (At the time of this writing, the plague of Crips and Bloods is no longer relegated to L.A. proper but has spread throughout the county, state, nation, and even across the globe.) One summer day while sitting on the very same porch spoken of above, a white ’78 Cadillac Coup Deville rolled up across the street. A young, light-skinned Black male with long curly hair draped down the back of his neck hopped out. He looked like El DeBarge might look if he were an L.A. gang member. This pretty-boy gangsta was visiting a girl who lived across the street. Propri was sitting on the porch with the boys in da hood, one of them being recently released from the California Youth Authority for shooting a man banging on his door. No one said anything to the menace across the street, they just wondered who he was as the group chuckled at his odd behavior. He was staring them down as if he was scanning for would-be enemies. It was evident he knew what hood he was in and he wanted to let it be known that he was not an ally, or that he was not afraid to be in the Hoover.

Propri left to go to football practice, and while the team was lined up for routine calisthenics he notices someone jumping the back fence along Normandie, and although he knew what he was looking at he could not believe his eyes. It was Mamma. He was too startled to be embarrassed. Something had to be really bad for Mamma to show up at football practice let alone hop a ten-foot fence. As he ran toward her, she had a look that he had never seen before: Mamma was overly excited, out of breath, and dripping with sweat. She proceeded to exclaim to her son that the house down the street just got shot up right after he left. Nobody was hit, but Cap might be mad at her because he ran down to our house and she would not let him in. Mamma left, warning Propri for the umpteenth time to stay away from the One-way. Later that evening after practice, he went straight to the house to find out what happened. Technically, he was not defying his mother because the house was about three houses away from the One-way, but he knew it was part of the no-zone. All anyone could say was the same dude in the white Cadillac came back and just started shooting with some type of automatic assault rifle. Everyone figured that the guy was from a rival gang and figured he had an opportunity to take out some enemies. After Propri was filled in by way of the usual that nigga was trippin’ rant, there was not a lot of discussion about the whole thing and the group moved on to smaller and idle things. Just another day in the 11-Duce.

Hey Propri, if you would have been home would you have let Cap in the house?

Yep!

What if Mamma would have been there to say no?

Then he would not have gotten in. Unless I could have snuck him through the back.

Did you think Mamma did the right thing?

Yes because Cap happened to be the only actual gang member on the porch that day, so the guy could have come after him and shot up our house in the process.

So why would you have let him in?

Because he was my friend and I did not want him to get shot or killed. I did not have enough sense to understand the danger. Well I had enough sense to understand, but not necessarily enough to do the right thing. There is a difference. The truth of the matter is that if I would have been home when the shooting started, in all likelihood I would have been with the guys and Cap might have been with me running to my house, and my mother would have let him in. What’s so wrong about me doing the same thing she would have done under different circumstances? That is how I saw it then, and that is how I see it now.

You neglect to mention that the very shooting is one of the many reasons you were not supposed to hang out near the One-way in the first place. By that time hanging out down there had become a foregone conclusion. Not only were you down there in broad daylight while Mamma was aware of it, you would also go down there late at night when she wasn’t.

That summer there would be another memorable relation that took place on the corner of 111th and Mariposa right across the street from the home where the man fled for his life. This is where Propri would begin his brief but life-altering career as a drug dealer. The first night Propri went out to slang he was with some more experienced drug dealers: Cap, Shaw, Dorsey, and his younger brother Manual that everyone called Art. Cap made it clear that no one should have any dope on him or even in the vicinity. He guaranteed that the police would be coming through and they would search everybody and all the surrounding area. Propri did not listen and sure enough within a matter of minutes, the police came creeping around the corner. Even though Propri was a novice at the dope game, he had a trick up his sleeve. As the police were slowly driving up, Propri pulls his hand out of his pocket with the small Ziploc baggy of rock cocaine in his hand. He walks directly toward the police car, right in front of it, opens his hand, and lets the baggy inconspicuously drop to the ground. In the same motion he turns slightly to his left, still walking toward the police as if he was just simply minding his own business and was going to walk right by the police car and be on his way. The patrol car continued to drive up right over the very evidence they would spend the next half an hour searching for. The police did not allow Propri to walk away and told him to get back over with the others as they proceeded to do exactly what Cap said they would do. After the usual lengthy question-and-search period, they did not find anything and drove away, leaving the eight rocks that Propri had strategically placed so the police would hide it for him. When he told Cap what he had done, to Propri’s surprise he was not amused. To the contrary, he was irritated because Propri had the drugs in the first place. Later Propri would come to understand that if the police had found the rocks on the ground as opposed to on an individual person, the whole group would have been arrested and charged with possession of crack cocaine for sale. Everyone except Cap, who was 19, was under 18, and Cap would have gone to prison. The federal government had just initiated the war on drugs, and crack-cocaine sentencing was extremely harsh.

One of the reasons the novice drug dealer was so impressed with his little getaway was because he actually learned the deception in a purely spontaneous manner and under different circumstances. In the summer of 1984, he was coming out of one of the many weed spots in Inglewood near Centinela Hospital. Before Propri went into the spot, he noticed a police car on the corner with an officer who appeared to be doing paperwork. Most people would have turned away or at least been reluctant to go in and purchase a sack, but not Propri—he went right on in. He was inside less than five minutes. Backtracking home while on the lookout, he notices that the police car is gone. With the nickel bag in his hand because all he was wearing was a tank top, basketball shorts, and flip-flops, he still feels safe. After walking about three blocks, the same police officer pulls up from behind and tells him to walk toward the car. As Propri walks to the passenger side of the car, the officer turns his back to get out and Propri drops the bag of weed and kicks it underneath the patrol car. The officer questioned and searched his suspect, completely sure that the would-be weed smoker was in possession. After the futile search he let the kid go without any type of explanation or warning. When the officer was out of sight, his suspect walked casually back a few yards and picked up his sack of weed as if it were a coin in the street and went on his merry way, being relieved, amazed, and somewhat confused. How in the world did I get away with that? he thought, bursting with anticipation of telling someone of his trickery. Even though he’d acted out of desperation, he felt he had consciously outsmarted the cop. Two years later the same trick would be played out with quick-thinking intent. Propri was learning the ways of the street in short order.

Fast-forward to the summer of ’86 when Mamma went to Sacramento to bury Propri’s grandmother, who had finally passed away after a two-year battle with cancer. Actually, that spring is when the boy decided to thrust himself into the epidemic of crack cocaine on the supply side of demand. When she left L.A. for Sactown, Mamma was unaware that her youngest son was selling crack. She had no reservations about leaving her 16-year-old son along with his 18-year-old brother at home alone for a few weeks while she tended to the passing of Grandma. Within that short period of time, little did she know her youngest son would go from sneaking out of the house after she fell asleep and selling crack on a one-way street less than half a block from their home, to spending days at a time in a one-room apartment selling crack 24/7. When Mamma got home, the child told her that while she was gone he got a job working with CJ, who grew up around the corner on 112th Street. Mamma noticed in quick order that her child was staying out all night at this so-called job. She told him that she did not care what he was doing—a 16-year-old had no business staying out all night. Mamma told him that he no longer worked with CJ and she would tell him herself. The next day when Mamma went to work, Propri packed up a few items of clothing and went back to the dope spot. In his feeble mind he would return after he had enough money so that Mamma could not deny him her love because he was rich. After all, isn’t that what life is all about—financial success regardless of the means? He found out that although her love was unconditional, she would never tolerate her son being a drug dealer.

That fall a 16-year-old boy is standing in front of a burger joint on Labrea Avenue in Inglewood. He is wearing a white t-shirt and a pair of polyester shorts that would have looked decent if it were not for the fact that they resembled the short-shorts NBA players wore back in the ’80s. His shabby attire was complete at the feet, donning a pair of imitation low-top FILA sneakers with no socks. Three days earlier the boy had been arrested for the first of what would be many. After spending the night in the local jail, an older man familiar with the routine at the Inglewood police station perceived that Propri was not of adult age. His perception was eerie because Propri looked well above his age. The minor confessed that he was not 18, but only 16. The seasoned inmate looked the potential victim of the notorious L.A. county jail straight in the eye and said, When you hear the police tell the cell to ‘roll it up,’ the first thing you do is tell them that you are 16, because the last thing you want to do is be 16 in the L.A. county jail. The juvenile drug dealer took heed of the man’s advice and the officers immediately removed him from the adult cell and put him in isolation.

Several hours went by before Propri was taken into an office to be briefed on his situation. To his surprise, sitting at the desk was a middle-aged man in a grey polyester-wool suit who looked more like a suburban elementary school principal than a cop. His countenance was fatherly and he spoke in a soft tone like the guy on the other side of confession. The social worker told Propri that Mamma refused to pick him up. He said that Mamma loved him but the only way she could keep him off the streets was to keep him locked up. The moment she refused to come get him, Propri became a ward of the court: a decision that would work out just fine for the child’s future activities in the streets of his hometown. Once a youth becomes a ward of the court, he is practically immune from criminal charges because the court is responsible for his actions. If the court is responsible for your actions, they are not going to hold you accountable for them. After becoming a ward of the court, every time Propri was arrested he was classified as 601 (No Crime Committed).

After spending three days at Central Juvenile Hall, the delinquent was transported back to Inglewood; coincidentally the juvenile court was located just across the street from Crozier Junior High School, the very same campus Propri matriculated at during his middle-school years. In fact, the closest store to the campus was located inside the courthouse on the bottom floor. Approximately four years after Propri moved up to high school (the term moved up is used with intent because there is no way the student earned advancement), he would be adjudicated on the upper floors of the courthouse, where he once bought cinnamon rolls and hot chocolate before class.

After spending the day in the holding tank of the juvenile court, the van was loaded with wayward youngsters and headed eastward back to Central; Propri never saw the judge. The next day something happened which still defies legal logic: the ward of the court was released on his own recognizance because he did not see a judge within 72 hours. This luxury is something that only happens in the adult court. In any case, Propri was released and had just enough change in his pocket to hop on the first bus headed west from Central Juvenile Hall and found his way to the above-mentioned hamburger joint which was just around the corner from the dope house where he was arrested.

Hey, Pro.

Don’t call me Pro! It’s bad enough that you call me Propri. That ain’t even my name. And why do I have to have a different name in this sham?

"We call you Propri because it is short for an old Latin word proprium, which means selfhood, or what belongs to one’s own character and personality."

Define it as you wish, it still stinks.

That is exactly why I call you Propri, Propri. You don’t like it. I was wondering if it crossed your mind that much of your childhood would give people ammunition to claim that your alcoholism had underlying causes?

How do you figure? I might be a drunk but I am not addicted to alcohol, and why would you bring that up anyway? I don’t even know what an underlying cause is.

You will find out soon enough, but for now let’s just say that they will insist that your experiences with selling drugs and having your friends being shot at were either character flaws or traumatic experiences that caused you to drink. There are other things that happened that we have not touched on that will add bullets to their theory of underlying causes.

Um, who is ‘they’?

Like I said, you will find out soon enough.

Well ‘they,’ whoever they might be, can twist my words however they want, but they will just be shooting blanks. The truth is that I did not hit the streets to sell drugs until after I started drinking. The absolute truth is that it is the other way around. I would have never developed the courage or apathy to go out to the One-way and sell crack in the middle of the night without the influence of alcohol. All the worst things that happened in my life to this point were either a direct or an indirect result of my alcohol use and abuse.

Well make no mistake about it, it is going to get worse before it gets better.

That’s what you keep telling me, but it can’t get any worse as far as I am concerned. Prior to alcohol consumption, my only real problem in life was being a bad student, which kept me from doing what I loved—basketball and to a later extent football. I didn’t drink because I felt bad, I drank because I liked the way it made me feel. Prior to drinking basketball was my life, I loved basketball, and if I was enjoying myself at some other activity I would still prefer to be playing basketball; there was no underlying cause that I was trying to escape nor was it a character flaw. I loved how I felt on the court, and I loved how alcohol made me feel—it is a mind-altering substance. Anyway the title of this chapter is ‘Fear of Manhood,’ not ‘Fear of Ole English 800.’

"Propri, at times you seem to relish in your past mischief as if they were tender moments in your life. Throwing rocks at cars, riding on the back of the ice-cream truck, vandalizing property, then moving on to cut school, smoke weed, drink forty ounces, and generally preparing to become a statistic. The irony is that you have left that life of reckless abandonment to become consumed by idleness and vanity. In a way, you are worse off than you were when in destructive mode simply because back then you at least had vision and knew you could eventually do something substantial with your life. When you were active, albeit unconsciously and without morals, you still had the will to do something with your life. There was a time when the future appeared to be bright because there was a chance of making something of a life that had turned from one of destructive compulsiveness to one that at least had potential. During adolescence and as a young adult there was confidence that you could succeed if you moved on from, or shall we say survived, your past transgressions. Yet ten years after your last arrest, you still live as if you are suffering the consequences of the past. Why is it that when you think of the good times, it is when you were doing the things that were contrary to order? In other words, the ‘good ole days’ seem to be those times when you were free to do things without recognition of the long-term effect they would have on your life.

We have known for a long while that you are suffering from the consequences of past deeds; so they should not seem all that good, even in retrospect. The reason why you still struggle is because you have put the criminal lifestyle behind you, yet you have not replaced it with productive behavior. This need is evidence that you are still burdened by consequences—not consequences of legality but consequences of moral character. You have changed, but you have not gotten any better, which is why you tend to look at past transgressions quite fondly, while using ‘life experience’ as a pretext to justify the feelings of nostalgia. Nostalgia that is synonymous with idle behavior, behavior that is not idle because it is self-destructive. Not doing anything can be just as bad as doing the wrong thing. This creates a conflict that causes a tempestuous war that rages within you. At one point you are going to have to feel genuine regret for the past and the impact it has had on your life in the present, to reconcile the contradiction of having no regrets yet still having a guilty conscience. As it stands you have no regrets, and I have a guilty conscience. The necessity of earning a living is the only reason why you are able to even keep up the resemblance of manhood. So yes indeed, Propri, you do understand what it means to be a man, but you do not live in accordance with that understanding. Can you explain that?

Nope, hey do you remember that four months we spent in the Sacramento county jail?

No, I wasn’t there and don’t try to change the subject.

Okay. It was my first time being in jail as a ‘legal’ adult. It all started the day after high school graduation. I went to Carl’s Jr., got a job, and the day after that I went to Der Wienerschnitzel and got a second job. While most of my graduating class was enjoying their summer and preparing for college, I was working sixteen hours a day at two different fast-food joints. This might have been admirable if I was working to save money for school or even to buy a car or something like that. No, not me—I was working my tail off over the summer so that I could go down to L.A., pick up a couple of ounces of crack, and get back into the dope game strong. Hey, I think this little tidbit is one of the reasons you decided to name me Propriety, or Propitiate or whatever that word is.

It sure wasn’t Propitiate but Yeah, and although you didn’t know it at the time, Mamma saved your butt again. It did not take her long to figure out what was going on.

"I had been back from L.A. about a week when I left the house to pick up some money that a guy owed me. By the time I returned, Mamma was gone and so was my dope along with about $600. After searching my room and finding my stash, Mamma went around the corner to a phone booth and called the police to ask them what she should do. She was lucky when she called. She got the right officer, because he told her that if they came out to the house whoever was in possession of the crack was going to jail. They could actually arrest everyone in the house for possession, so if she did not want me to go to jail for a very long time she had better dispose of it and deal with it without getting the law involved. In the fall of ’88 Ronald and his wife Nancy were in the midst of their ‘Just Say No / War on Drugs’ crusade, which meant getting caught with an ounce and a half of crack cocaine would have made me a long-term resident of the state of California.

As I watched Mamma flush my hard-earned money down the toilet, there was nothing I could do but stand there. As thuggish as I was, there was no thought of using any type of physical force to stop her. My mother was the only person who could have flushed that dope right in front of me. I would have caused physical harm, maybe even to the point of murder, if anyone else would have tried to flush what I’d spent the last three months working like a dog to secure. It was painful to watch. Since she knew I worked for it, I was able to talk (or shall I say scream) her into giving me the $600 that she found with the dope. I think she was going to burn it. I hopped on a motorcycle that I’d bought from a former classmate and went to one of the local motels, where I immediately arranged to buy a quarter pound of marijuana. I spent the rest of that evening bagging up the weed and calling all the weed smokers that I knew.

You didn’t buy that motorcycle.

"Okay, I traded for it. I woke up the next morning to the familiar sound of pounding on the door—that unmistakable knock of the police. I had not sold any weed so I figured they were not there for that. I immediately realized why they were there: my former classmate reported his motorcycle stolen. One of the many foolish things about my decision-making is the fact that I knew the guy was going to do that. As soon as he took the last hit he would be calling the cops—he probably did it as soon as I drove off on the bike. Yet my dumb behind was riding around on it anyway. When the cops first knocked I refused to open the door since I knew what they wanted; I figured I would try to bluff my way out of it. I peeked through the curtain and asked what they wanted.

"‘Is that your motorcycle?’

"‘Nope.’

"‘Well the hotel clerk said that the person in this room was riding a motorcycle.’

"‘Wasn’t me.’

"‘Can you open the door?’

"‘Nope,’ I answer, but I guess they figured they had probable cause as they began to kick the door. Realizing that resistance was futile, I went ahead and opened it before the second blow. I was busted—no need to add insult to injury at this point, and maybe if I went quietly they would just take me in without searching my bags. Yeah, right! Next thing you know I am on my way to jail for the first time as an adult charged with felony grand theft and felony possession for sale.

"The grand theft charges were dropped because my former classmate went to the police and told enough of the truth. Since it was my first offense as an adult, I was released on my own recognizance. I entered a plea of no contest to the possession charge and remained out of jail on my O.R. until sentencing. I never showed up for my sentencing and became a fugitive; I was on the run without actually running. After my initial release, I stayed with my brother and his girlfriend, and a few weeks later my public defender informed me that I was going to have to do six months in the county jail. After that, I simply stopped showing up to court, and no one in my family asked me about the case; I never mentioned the fact that I was a wanted man. After staying with my brother and his girlfriend for a month or so, Mamma came over and asked me what I was going to do with my life. I don’t recall what my exact words were, and since she did not know that I was ‘on the run’ she let me come back home about three weeks later.

"One would think that a cat on the lam would keep a low profile, but not me, not Propri. I ended up hooking up with a guy named Jerry, an old-school ex-con drug dealer who did a long prison term for murder. Jerry kept pounds of weed in his closet sealed in large Ziplock’s stuffed inside of bowling ball bags. Jerry began to front me quarter pounds of weed, and this time I was sure not to bring anything into Mamma’s house. She would have stopped up the toilet trying to flush all that weed, so I kept it at my brother’s girl’s apartment. My apathy was amazing because I did not have a job, yet I always had money; it was just a matter of time before Mamma caught on.